In working with student government this past year, I’ve come across several people who are students but who try to be politicians. And by that, I mean the sleazy, slippery, reason-we-hate-politicians type of politicians. I don’t particularly understand the motivation, except maybe to just appear as a politician. I guess people have made comments such as, “Yeah, he’s just being a good politician”, and maybe these are the compliments these people strive to get.

I get very frustrated working with these people, and I visibly fume. Take a recent example where one student completely and ruthlessly expressed his disgust with a particularly idea, in the company of a group of other students. However, when the audience changed to a key MIT administrator, the same student sweet-talked the administrator and told stories about how he really supported the idea and how he only wished he could have done more to convince others that it was a good idea.

My jaws dropped during that meeting. While I never had that great of an impression of this guy before, he just lost all forms of respect from me.

When I brought this up with the two other students in the meeting, they agreed, but one of them backed up the sleazy guy and said, “Well, he was just being a good politician. He did what was best for us, and he said what I wouldn’t have been able to say.” I was more shocked. So now his actions are being viewed as good? When did we lose all sense of integrity??

I really feel that there are two ways to do politics: with slippery sleaziness and with integrity. The slippery sleaziness is like the hacked temporary solution; you smile and tell people what they want to hear knowing full well that you are completely lying to them. It’s not even a white lie; you are just flat-out lying through your teeth. The people are happy with you in the moment, but 1) everyone else who witnesses this loses respect for you, and 2) eventually the people you lied to figure it out, and they too, hate you.

The integrity is trying your best to do what is right and to be able to in your heart, justify your decisions. It’s impossible to make everyone happy, and politicians have that impossible task. So the point shouldn’t be to make everyone happy, but to have a good feeling about the decisions you do make. People will disagree, but you can go to sleep at night knowing you did your best and your actions were not questionable morally.

I heard a talk recently, by a Harvard Business School graduate-turned entrepreneur. He talked about this idea of a company culture, and how important that was especially for a small start-up. He put up a list of qualities to define his current company culture (small startup with some 10 employees, I think). And in there, specifically, says “As much as possible, do everything that is right.” He even mentioned in his talk that they value personality so much when hiring. If someone is arrogant, that’s a big red flag. If someone seems dishonest, that’s a even bigger no-no.

So often, HBS graduates and politicians and entrepreneurs get lumped into the same pot of “sleazy schmoozers”, and it was nice and refreshing to see a completely humble and down to earth guy talk about the importance of integrity and company culture. It made me feel kinda justified in my whole view that politics can be conducted with integrity instead of immorality.